Romano, Santi (1875–1947)

Santi Romano was a leading figure of the Italian general theory of law in the first half of the twentieth century [Page 1327]and a prominent representative of institutionalism. He was the professor of constitutional law at the universities of Pisa, Milan, and Rome and president of the Consiglio di Stato, the apex Italian administrative court. His main works were Lo Stato moderno e la sua crisi (1910, The Modern State and Its Crisis), L'ordinamento giuridico (1917, The Legal Order), and Frammenti di un dizionario giuridico (1947, Fragments of a Legal Dictionary).

Romano took part in the antiformalist movements concerning the general theory of law. He criticized normative theories of law grounded in the concept of a legal system as a mere set of norms, which in ...